4 ms·
It's either a joke or a magic trick - you set up a generation by saying one thing, and then reveal that the world has been doing a completely different thing wh
by Bartweiss 11y ago
It's either a joke or a magic trick - you set up a generation by saying one thing, and then reveal that the world has been doing a completely different thing while they were distracted.
I grew up with adults suggesting journalism and law as careers for me. I'd have been richer and happier with a vocational education in forestry or advanced mechanical work, but I didn't even know those careers existed until late in high school. I just got damned lucky that software caught my attention instead.
- galdosdi 11y agoAlong the same lines, there's the ridiculous cultural meme that is recited to kids: "Follow your dreams" implying that it's a perfectly reasonable and even admirable idea to fixate on some particular career early on in life and pursue it despite any setbacks. This is awful, because a young kid may only have heard of a handful of well-known "classic" careers like journalist, lawyer, athlete, nurse, and then they end up fixating on achieving one of those simply because they committed too early -- before they had a chance to hear about careers less likely to be in a Richard Scary book like forestry, mechanical work, system administration, helicopter piloting, whatever, even though one of those might be just as exciting or more. As a result the "popular" careers that everyone's heard of by the age of ten are all oversubscribed, and all other careers are undersubscribed. Because "follow your dreams"
- SilasX 11y agoAlso, any academic post-graduate role is oversubscribed because too many people go to college, and in college, hear a disproportionate amount from people who did well through the post-graduate route. (Though that's changing as the actual instructors are increasingly made of famished adjuncts and TAs.)